The New Republic has just published a major piece on Human Rights Watch and their deeply disturbed relationship to Israel. Its a case study of demopaths and dupes, human rights complex, masochistic omnipotence syndrome, and the left-jihadi alliance. Below, a few choice passages.

With Palestinian suicide bombings reaching a crescendo in early 2002, precipitating a full-scale Israeli counterterrorist campaign across the West Bank, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division (MENA) issued two reports (and myriad press releases) on Israeli misconduct—including one on the Israel Defense Forces’ assault on terrorist safe havens in the Jenin refugee camp. That report—which, to HRW’s credit, debunked the widespread myth that Israel had carried out a massacre—nevertheless said there was “strong prima facie evidence” that Israel had “committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions,” irking the country’s supporters, who argued that the IDF had in fact gone to great lengths to spare Palestinian civilians. (The decision not to launch an aerial bombardment of the densely populated area, and to dispatch ground troops into labyrinthine warrens instead, cost 23 Israeli soldiers their lives—crucial context that HRW ignored.) It would take another five months for HRW to release a report on Palestinian suicide bombings—and another five years for it to publish a report addressing the firing of rockets and mortars from Gaza, despite the fact that, by 2003, hundreds had been launched from the territory into Israel. (HRW did issue earlier press releases on both subjects.)

In the years to come, critics would accuse HRW of giving disproportionate attention to Israeli misdeeds. According to HRW’s own count, since 2000, MENA has devoted more reports to abuses by Israel than to abuses by all but two other countries, Iraq and Egypt. That’s more reports than those on Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Algeria, and other regional dictatorships. (When HRW includes press releases in its count, Israel ranks fourth on the list.) And, if you count only full reports—as opposed to “briefing papers,” “backgrounders,” and other documents that tend to be shorter, less authoritative, and therefore less influential—the focus on the Jewish state only increases, with Israel either leading or close to leading the tally. There are roughly as many reports on Israel as on Iran, Syria, and Libya combined.

HRW officials acknowledge that a number of factors beyond the enormity of human rights abuses go into deciding how to divide up the organization’s attentions: access to a given country, possibility for redress, and general interest in the topic. “I think we tend to go where there’s action and where we’re going to get reaction,” rues one board member. “We seek the limelight—that’s part of what we do. And so, Israel’s sort of like low-hanging fruit.”

[snip]

[Bernstien and] Edith Everett, a member of both the MENA advisory committee and the HRW board, a former stockbroker, and a philanthropist who has donated millions to aid Druze Arabs in Israel, eventually came to believe that their concerns were falling on deaf ears. For Everett, the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war was a turning point. “Participating on the board became most difficult since [that war],” she recalls. While Everett agreed with some of HRW’s critiques—on Israel’s use of cluster munitions, for example—she took issue with many of the organization’s conclusions, including its reporting on human shield use in Lebanon. (In a 2007 report, HRW insisted that Hezbollah fighters did not shield themselves and their weapons among the local civilian population on a widespread basis.) For a long time, Everett had felt there was a healthy exchange about these issues inside HRW, but that had begun to change. “I felt in recent times there was less of a dialogue,” she says. “It seemed to me that there was a commitment to a point of view—that Israel’s the bad guy here.”

[snip]

Robert James—a businessman, World War II veteran, and member of the MENA advisory committee who has been involved with HRW almost since its inception—calls the group “the greatest NGO since the Red Cross,” but argues that it is chronically incapable of introspection. “Bob is bringing this issue up on Israel,” he says. “But Human Rights Watch has a more basic problem. … They cannot take criticism.”

[snip]

Critics have pointed out that a number of Whitson’s colleagues in MENA—such as Joe Stork, who came to HRW after decades as a leader of the left-wing Middle East Research and Information Project, where he was part of an editorial collective that ran an extremely anti-Israel journal—arrived at the organization with backgrounds in the pro-Palestinian movement. Sid Sheinberg argues that the mere appearance of a biased jury at MENA ill-serves HRW. “Is it smart to have a number of people about which questions can be asked—in either direction?” he says. But, when I asked Whitson about this critique—and, specifically, about a former researcher on Israel who, before starting at HRW, wrote pro-Palestinian dispatches from the West Bank and Gaza describing Israeli soldiers as “protected by arrogance and hatred and a state and an army and the world’s superpower”—she said she didn’t see a problem with this situation. “For people who apply for jobs to be the researcher in Israel-Palestine, it’s probably going to be someone who’s done work on Israel-Palestine with a human rights background,” she explained. “And guess what? People who do work with a human rights background on Israel-Palestine tend to find that there are a lot of Israeli abuses. And they tend to become human rights activists on the issue.” For his part, HRW program director Iain Levine, who oversees the organization’s 16 divisions, acknowledges that people from many divisions—and not just MENA—arrive from “solidarity backgrounds,” but insists that, “when they come to the door of this organization, they park those things behind.”

Whether or not Whitson has done so, she clearly favors a tough approach toward the Jewish state. She has argued that, far from being too harsh toward Israel, HRW is actually too lenient. “[B]elieve me,” she wrote in an e-mail to a MENA advisory committee member, “on israel in particular, we are overly cautious and extremely kid-gloved because of the harassment we endure.” Less definitive—but still arguably revealing—evidence about Whitson’s politics can be found in her opinion of Norman Finkelstein, the activist and avowed Hezbollah supporter who has likened Israel to Nazi Germany. The two became acquainted years ago, and she brought him to HRW to discuss his 2005 book Beyond Chutzpah. (“He had a very mixed reception,” she remembers. “I think people did not find his style particularly persuasive.”) In late 2006, when Finkelstein launched a letter-writing campaign demanding that HRW officials apologize for a press release critical of Palestinian officials (which they eventually did), one HRW observer e-mailed Whitson to share thoughts on Finkelstein’s over-the-top rhetoric. Whitson replied: “I agree w/ u that norm undermines himself and his cause w/ the language he uses, and his anger sometimes gets the better of him and his brilliant mind and generous spirit. I continue to have tremendous respect and admiration for him, because as you probably know, making Israeli abuses the focus of one’s life work is a thankless but courageous task that may well end up leaving all of us quite bitter.”

[snip]

Bernstein also raised some of his concerns with then-HRW board member Richard Goldstone, who would go on to write the U.N.’s much-maligned report on the Gaza war. There are few more reviled figures in Israel right now than Goldstone, but even he sympathized with Bernstein on certain points, such as the politicized nature of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which, after being created in 2006, had directed its first nine condemnations at Israel. In March 2008, barely a year before he accepted UNHRC’s mandate to investigate the Gaza war, he told Bernstein that he thought the body’s performance had been hopeless and expressed ambivalence as to whether HRW should continue appearing before it.

He also agreed with Bernstein that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s increasingly aggressive anti-Israel rhetoric, in combination with his threatening policies, was an issue worthy of HRW’s attention. Goldstone pushed Roth to address it, but to no avail. (When I asked Roth in a February interview at his office about HRW’s refusal to take a position on Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel, including his famous call for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” Roth quibbled about the way the statement had been translated in the West—“there was a real question as to whether he actually said that”—then told me that it was not HRW’s place to render judgments on such rhetoric: “Let’s assume it is a military threat. We don’t take on governments’ military threats just as we don’t take on aggression, per se. We look at how they behave. So, we wouldn’t condemn a military threat just as we wouldn’t condemn an invasion—we would look at how the government wages the war.” Whitson, who sat in on the interview, offered her two cents: “You know, that statement was also matched by Hillary Clinton saying that the Iranian regime should be destroyed or wiped off the map. Again, so, very similar statements, side by side, close in time.” For his part, Goldstone told TNR that he eventually came around to the view this was not an issue HRW should take up.)

In the full article, there is an interesting part reporting on the rôle of Marc Garlasco : he was one of the few experts on war in HRW and he wanted to give more balance to the reports of HRW, because he knew about “the fog of war”. So, the people who went after him for his hobby of collecting nazi paraphernalia (and in fact WWII paraphernalia in general) were going after the wrong guy.

This is an example that should be remembered. What people do on the side even if it looks more than bizarre is irrelevant to how they perform their job.

I don’t think anybody was interested in Garlasco or his hobby. It was an opportunity to harm the despicable HRW and such an opportunity must not be missed. Under equal knowledge that we had in September, I would advise the Elder to do the same thing again.

Sometimes a once good action will be seen as counterproductive in the light of future knowledge.

with hindsight, the Garlasco case looks quite silly : it makes little sense to harrass someone in an organization we don’t like, for stuff he is doing outside of the organization, and which is legal. It gives an image of fighting for light questions and forgetting about heavy ones. It does not advance the fight against human right NGO who are biased in the israelo-palestinian conflict. It just makes the people who denounced Garlasco look ridiculous.

The real issue here is not that HRW is critical of Israel but that it has taken a definite side in the conflict and is blind and uncritical to anything anyone does against Israel. Its fine if not welcomed to critisize Israel providing that this is done on the basis of the truth – its not fine and is in fact immoral to fabricate lies and be silent to gross human abuses by the Arabs.
For this reason HRW has become a propaganda tool of Arab Jihad and should be closed down promptly as it now serves an immoral purpose.
Stifling Galascow with a retrenchment package that prevents him from speaking out against the manipulations performed by HRW of his work is another example of how HRW has now become the opposite of what its purpose is supposed to be (stifling the freedom of speech of an individual??).
The same can be said of Goldstone in whom the world trusted to perform a diligent assesment instead of a popular political endorsement.

These are serious charges against HRW and Goldstone that cannot be left unaddressed if the world is to have an organisation to protect the un-protected and a judge to make universal judgements. These concepts have clearly been undermined to the detriment of all. But where can we find recourse to these evils???

Michelle
Except Garlasco was factually wrong in his reports on Cast Lead relating to WP. He also used the GC Protocols as the standard of engagement that Israel and the US never signed. So good riddance to the creep(yes creep, read his relic collector forum posts).

That’s Gerlasco’s story–now. Sure he focuses on the white phosphorus issue now, because his peers saw that as BS the moment it came out. But there are plenty of other things he wrote about explosives, debunked.

The article’s author is undereducated. Of course there is a reason phosphorus was chosen by the HRW team. Because it is specifically disallowed in explosives. That gave HRW and the Western Euro Lefty Hate Squad and easy way to say “War Crimes!” …omitting the fact that it does not apply to smokescreens and illuminants.

He is not just a collector of WWII parphrenalia, he wrote a large book on Nazi medals. Doesn’t damn him positively, but sure looks bad regarding Israel. This author definitely is out to protect him, maybe he likes him. Does not go into the issue of the possibility of the concocted lawyer’s letter the London Times hinted at. And these type of guys are prone to exaggeration.

What struck me about HRW is that it is controlled maybe not by Cold War leftists stuck in the Soviet Zionology discourse, but Edward Said-ian narrative-ologists. Lies in history excused if fits the narrative. Still working to pump the narrative of massacreology, the idea Palestinians in 1948 fled from mythical massacres rather than other things laid at their own feet, such as not wanting to live under Jews, or the enticements of United Nations welfare/refugee aid. Economically, a rational decision.

Finally,

“prima facie evidence.”

I have seen that here before, from a South African HRW flack about the Gaza report. It is a lawyer’s trick to make something sound like “proof,” actually a trick a lawyer would never pull in front of a judge, only a journalist. Prima facie evidence is worthless as proof of anything. All it means really is enough evidence to compel a response. Such as a useful Gazan saying “so and so did such.” That is prima facie evidence. It does not mean its true.

Amnesty International criticized the action, saying it would “violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion.”

John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination in Europe, said the Belgian action sets a dangerous precedent.

“In the absence of any demonstrable link between the wearing of full-face veils in Belgium and genuine threats to public safety, there can be no justification for the restriction on the freedom of expression and religion that a complete ban on the wearing of face veils in public places would entail,” Dalhuisen said.

“Far from upholding the rights of women, such a general ban would violate the rights of those who choose to wear full-face veils, while doing little to protect those who do so against their will, who risk even greater confinement as a result. The obligation to combat discrimination cannot be fulfilled by imposing a measure that is itself discriminatory.”

on Garlasco, i’ve written much, esp on Gaza Beach. his behavior is only reasonable in comparison with the rest of the post-colonial crew. his work was actually made worse at hq, but his own work was pretty bad.

There is an underlying obstacle in defending Israel from the HR and “apartheid” libels. That is the widespread belief in a “palestinian people”. There never was such a nation or people in history and the PLO charter boasts that “the palestinian Arab people is part of the Arab nation and palestine is an integral part of the Great Arab Fatherland.” The Palestinian Arabs themselves don’t believe in a distinct “palestinian people” but the brainwashing on this has been so intense and successful that it is now firmly entrenched as a conventional lie.

EG, you as a rational intellectual don’t see the connection. But it is there in the mass mind. Violating the “national rights” of the presumed “palestinian people” slides over into violating the individual human rights of those designated “palestinians.” The notion of a “palestinian people” is another one of the Big Lies preventing real peace. It is one the major, one of the biggest of the Big Lies. As I have said before, the psywar/cogwar geniuses have constructed the image of the “palestinians” as a collective Jesus forever being crucified by the Jews, that is, by Israel. The fact that these people are Arabs and so define themselves does not get in the way of the Palestinian Mystique, which comprises the collective Jesus notion, inter alia.

Europe exonerates itself of crimes against Jews by extolling Palestinians as victims, no matter how viciously they act, and by portraying Israelis as latter-day Nazis, no matter how necessary their self-defense. Thus has the Palestinian question “quietly relegitimated hatred of the Jews.”

there is an endeavor called “histoire des mentalités”, and I do not know how to translate it into english. I am pretty sure that Richard Landes knows the correct translation. In any case, it deals with representations in the mind of people, including lies, Big Lies and, probably statistics – for any one who has ever used seriously statistics, it is terribly easy to produce biased statistics: the numbers are OK, they are just irrelevant and/ore meaningless.

Maybe the Palestinian people is a Big Lie, but it is plain today that most Palestinians believe in it, and a very large number of Europeans love the image of Palestinians as a collective Jesus being crucified by Israel, or more generally by the Jews.

This belief is every bit as real as the present oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Jan. 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

I think that we must remain strong and determined in face of the representation of the Palestinian as the Christ of the nations, tortured by the Jews.

I think also that not any collective has the same right to human rights. Take for instance the collective of murderers – do they have the same rights to freedom as everyone else? There are courts of justice who decide to reduce the freedom of murderers, by putting them on trial and, if found guilty, sentencing them to jail or other punishments.

What is fascinating in the israleo-palestinian conflict, is how unfairly the court of western opinion is judging the two sides.

If you want to appreciate the stupendous level of unfairness and the total absence of reference to the notion of belief as a fact of history, I recommend the discourse of Jean Bricmont,. There is, for instance an interview of Bricmont here

In this interview, Bricmont explains that the minds of US citizens should be de-zionized in the own national interest of the US, but at no point does he even suggest tht the minds of the Arab neighbors of Israel and of the Palestinians might be de-incited and de-antisemtized in their own national and human interest.

Therefore, we are really in the realm of “histoire des mentalités”. Some beliefs are good and some are bad, and whoever is deciding which are which should give his value scale. Do not wait too long for Bricmont (who is really an extremist): he explains quite clearly that he agrees on many important point with Ahmadinejad, though Iran is not nice to women and homosexuals. So, some rights of man are not as right as others, and Bricmont is a wonderful example of how antiimperialism is deeply opposed to the rights of man, as I claimed in a previous thread.

I like your comments and I agree with you, on all matters French or not, most of the time. Would it be possible to know what you think of the ”Appel
a la Raison” ? French-speaking readers can find a debate on what seems to many people a French answer to J-Street on http://www.desinfos.com. I am hesitant whether I shall sign the ”Appel pour raison garder” which is a harsh criticism of the first one: I may be intimidated
by the fact that some generally far from obnoxious
people, such as Alain Finkielkraut, have been among the first signers of the ”Appel a la Raison”. What do you think of all this ?

Isn’t this trend underlying the new historians’ approach? Like, emphasising the primacy of the narrative (which is a mental representation) over a factual, documented account?

If the narrative constitutes and sometimes substitutes a fact, the whole story (replacing history) can be construed and reconstructed and deconstructed at will. Thus, the good guys and the bad guys are interchangeable in the re-presentation of what is but a representation shared by a few minds or mentalities.

A charming little tale from Arab folklore tells of a man whose afternoon nap was disturbed by the noise of children playing in the courtyard below. He went out to the balcony and called, “Children, how foolish you are! While you are playing here, they are giving away figs in the marketplace.”
The children rushed off to collect their figs, and the man, pleased with his invention, went back to his couch. But just as he was about to drop off, a troublesome thought aroused him: “Here I am, lying around, when there are free figs to be had in the marketplace!”

Thanks for your message: as my previous message addressed itself to Michelle, I assumed without checking that the answer to it was hers. There are some
very interesting people on the counter-appeal (against
the J-Street inspired one), in particular Pierre-Andre
Taguieff.

Radio 4 cannot tell the true story of the Redgraves’ politics because, although Marxist-Leninism has long gone, a part of the poison of the Trotskyism of the 1968 generation lingers in the bloodstream of the wider Left — the propensity for Jew-baiting and conspiracy theory, the shrieking dogmatism, and, beyond all that, the self-censorship, which stops a broadcaster legally obliged to be objective dealing plainly with news that reflects badly on its class and kind.

The regime of Iran is calling non-violent Iranian dissidents inside and outside of Iran “terrorists” and is using Interpol to arrest and suppress non-violent Iranian dissidents inside and ouside of Iran.

“Another view on Iranian terror”

“Iran has sponsored terrorism around the globe. Now the Iranian government is accusing dissidents who advocate civil disobedience, within and outside of Iranian borders, of terrorism and is now even issuing arrest warrents for foreign nationals via Interpol.”

“The regime of Iran is calling non-violent Iranian dissidents inside and outside of Iran “terrorists” and is using Interpol to arrest and suppress non-violent Iranian dissidents inside and ouside of Iran.”

The Iranian dissidents inside and ouside of Iran who the regime of Iran is calling “terrorists” are non-violent, however I should have just written, and I initially did just write, “Iranian dissidents”.

I added the word “non-violent” as an afterthought, but I think that it would have been better if I had not added the word “non-violent”. My adding the word “non-violent” in this context conjures contextual views that are wrong and counterproductive to arise in the mind.

a very large number of Europeans love the image of Palestinians as a collective Jesus being crucified by Israel, or more generally by the Jews.

Michelle is quite right to say the above. Indeed, it was in order to produce such reactions –building 20th century political hatred on the grounds of medieval bigotry– that the “palestinian people” notion was invented, by British psywar/cogwar experts in my informed opinion.

However, Michelle, I don’t agree that “it is plain today that most Palestinians believe in it”. Do most Palestinian Arabs believe in it? In fact, they consider themselves Arabs belonging to the subset of Arabs called “palestinian Arabs.” Why does Abu Mazen, like arafat before him, go to Arab League meetings? Why does he, like arafat, view the Arab League as a source of authority as well as support?

Here is how the PLO charter [1968] puts it, conveniently in French translation by one Xavier Baron [Proche-Orient, du refus a la paix,Hachette 1994]:
Article 1. La Palestine est la patrie du peuple arabe palestinien; elle constitue une partie inseparable de la grande patrie arabe, et le peuple palestinien fait partie de la nation arabe.
Here is my translation from the French:
“Palestine is the fatherland of the Palestinian Arab people; it constitutes an inseparable pat of the Great Arab Fatherland, and the Palestinian people forms part of the Arab nation.”

So for the PLO, “palestinians” are the Arabs living in “Palestine”, a subset of the Arab nation. For Hamas the “palestinians” are most importantly part of the Islamic nation {ummah]. Hence, the “palestinian” identity of these Arabs is secondary to their Arab identity or Arab character, whereas for Hamas, the Islamic identity is foremost. The PLO/Fatah and the “palestinian authority” make their position or attitude clear time and again. But since the notion of “palestinians” as a collective Jesus is so appealing to so many Euros, they don’t pay attention to what the Arabs themselves are saying. Indeed, the way the “palestinian people” notion is typically viewed in Europe [obviously, not by everyone], as a mystique, a guilt-absolving and Judeophobic tradition-justifying mystique, shows that it serves psychological purposes for many or most Euros, as well as a psywar/cogwar weapon for the Arabs and for leading Western Judeophobes.

Hence, the “palestinian people” notion was essential to justifying the Holocaust and pre-Holocaust oppression/persecution of Jews, and to justifying continuing post-Holocaust Judeophobia. As an example of this, see the latest Nazi-like effusions of john mearsheimer.

I wrote my previous comments about the article which reported on the clerical regime of Iran’s use of Interpol to arrest and suppress Iranian dissidents outside of Iran before I read the article (because I was overwhelmed by OCD). I had read mainly just the introductory summary.

Since I had not read the article I did not know for sure whether or not the Iranian dissidents whom the Iranian regime were calling “terrorists” and were seeking to suppress with Interpol were all in fact non-violent, and therefore it was wrong of me to describe the dissidents that the Iranian regime is seeking to suppres with Interpol as “non-violent”, and because I had not read the article it was wrong of me to write anything about the article. I should have just quoted the title of the article and the introductory summary of the article and listed the link to the article.

I have read through most of the article (as much as I can with my OCD right now), and I now am almost sure that it is in fact the case that the Iranian dissidents whom the clerical regime is calling “terrorists” whom the article to which I linked talked about are in fact all non-violent.

The Iranian regime has, through Interpol, which was just recently given, by Obama, the ability to operate in the U.S without being subjected to the legal constraints of the U.S. consitution which apply to all U.S. law enforcement agencies, closed the bank account of, and issued an arrest warrant for an Iranian resident of Los Angeles who operates a radio station which presents analyses of events in Iran and which reports on human rights abuses by the current clerical regime of Iran.

The following is a quote from an Iranian pro-regime website which is a quote that presents an example of how the Iranian regime is defining “terrorism”, which is a quote that is quoted in the article to which I linked.

“Homayoun encouraged his audience to engage in acts of terrorism against the Islamic regime such as writing slogans (on walls) and resisting the security forces.”

we are really in the realm of “histoire des mentalités”. Some beliefs are good and some are bad, and whoever is deciding which are which should give his value scale. Of course this is true, Michelle.

… Some rights of man are not as right as others, and Bricmont is a wonderful example of how antiimperialism is deeply opposed to the rights of man, as I claimed in a previous thread. Anti-imperialism was never exactly what the “Marxist-Leninists” [Communists, Trotskyist Communists in their various and sundry sects and “tendencies”] claimed it to be. Soviet imperialism and colonialism in Central Asia and Siberia, etc., were never objectionable. Tens of millions of Russians and other folk from Europe were settled in Central Asia, in the Muslim lands of Kazakhstan, Tadjikistan, etc. But this was not deemed to be objectionable colonialism by the Western Commies and Trots. Although they complain that Jews settled in Israel. Further, when Communists oppose Israel and –before 1946– Zionism, they were in fact siding with the British Empire [can we call it imperialism?]. The British Empire opposed the independence of Israel –and does so to this day. Indeed, British armed forces, aircraft, tanks, artillery, infantry, fought on the Arab side in Israel’s War of Independence. The British wanted to organize a Pan-Arab state under British sponsorship and leadership in the Fertile Crescent from at least 1939 on [see Meir Zamir’s research, inter alia]. The British Empire was also a silent partner in the Holocaust.

By refusing to actually join the Resistance and by avoiding helping the Jews, the Trots objectively helped British policy and the German policy of mass murdering Jews. The Trots saw the German Wehrmacht troops as workers and soldiers [an underground Trot paper that came out in Belgium during the German Occupation was called “Arbeiter und Soldat.” Their policy was that the Resistance was wrong to attack and kill German soldiers who were, after all, fellow “workers” [arbeiter]. But today, the Trots and other Commie breeds and strains and afterbirths think that it is quite OK for Fatah or Hamas or Hizbullah to murder Jewish civilians in Israel –or even in France, for that matter. What did the Trots and Commies have to say about the Selam and Halimi and other cases of Jews murdered in France since 2000??

At the same time, the Trots, Commies, and other Marxist-Leninist groupuscules or pustules totally forget Lenin’s definition of imperialism. He argued in “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” that imperialism was about the same as Finance Capital. Yet they assiduously overlook the huge amounts of capital held by Arabs in Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf sheikdoms and emirates, and elsewhere, capital much of which is invested in the West. The Arab super-rich are OK. They are 3rd World super-rich so therefore they must be inherently “progressive.” [does the word “progressive” mean anything anymore?].

Of course, today’s “Left” in Europe and elsewhere habitually disregards the more than ten million exploited and cheated foreign workers in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf subject to terrible living and working conditions. So the Western Left is no longer concerned with exploited workers. At least not if they are exploited by Arabs. Can we say now that by their friendship for Arab regimes the Western Left collaborates in that exploitation and mistreatment?? Can we also say that the Euro “marxist-leninist” Left supports the pro-Arab, anti-Israel [objectively and subjectively Judeophobic] policy of the EU and EU member states? That is, does the Euro M-L Left support their own imperialist govts? [using Lenin’s definition of imperialism]. Is the M-L Left and most of the rest of the Left in the West now an adjunct of what they used to call “imperialism”??

The height of absurdity is reached by an M-L rag in the United States, the “Monthly Review”, that in its Israelophobia welcomes to its pages, john mearsheimer, a State Dept consultant and exponent of throwing Israel to the Arab wolves in the name of US “national interests” and “America First”-style American patriotism. Does the Marxism-Leninist Left and other varieties of Left in the West now depart from old style socialism to embrace German style Nazional-Sozialismus??
[on mearsheimer’s latest escapade see Martin Peretz at The New Republic blog and also see the Commentary magazine blog]

On a side issue, we are facing the question: Is Obama Anti-American or is he just a stupid, arrogant and ignorant fool who thinks he is so much smarter than the presidents before him?
(This “or” doesn’t need to be exclusive.)

Last December, President Obama amended executive order 12425 that dealt with the limitations that were put on Interpol by President Reagan in 1983.

Andrew et al. about “raison garder”. After some thought, I signed it. I was very surprised that Henri Atlan and Alain Finkielkraut signed the JCall petition. I figured out that they did it either out of loyalty for Shalom Achshav, or out of loyalty to the israeli left, or to some specific personalities. I certainly do not have the bunch of insults for Shalom Achshav that some people on the israeli right have. I believe that, by now, they should have learnt about cognitive egocentrism, and therefore, they should have updated their strategy and tactics. Unfortunately, they haven’t. I am not a member of any political party or association, therefore, I have little or no influence.

However, I am definitely not in favor of any one state solution, be it based on expelling the arabs from the area of the mandate Palestine, expelling the Jews from the same area or giving a try to the binational state «solution», which looks even more impossible than the previous two «solutions». Hence, I am in favor of separate states for the Arabs and the Jews. On the other hand, I am quite aware of the difficulty,since the Palestinians seem more interested in destroying Israel than in setting up their own state.

I wish peaceniks were more realistic. The european peaceniks don’t seem to be realistic at all, which is why I signed the “raison garder” appeal.

Re. new historians and the importance of the narrative: I am definitely not an expert on the new historians, but I believe that my advocacy for “histoires des mentalités” has little to do with the equivalence of the narratives, that characterize such people as Ilan Pappé. Considering the narrative as an interesting object for historians does not imply ipso facto that the narrative should be confused with history. Learning about Shabtay Tsvi does not require anybody to decide about his being (or not) a messiah, but it demands that one should understand what the word messiah means and the place of messianism in the jewish tradition.

Daniel : it is late, I will nt read now yolink, but it looks quite terrifying. Thank you for mentioning it.

“we all know what Israel is up to…”
These folks are mightily well-informed! Who could doubt it? This shows what lies repeated over and over can do when the soil they fall onto is well-plowed, receptive, and well-fertilized with manure.

I like the character who is rewriting the Latin proverb:
Si vis pacem para bellum
[If you want peace, prepare for war]
This genius changes the proverb to:
If you want peace, provide justice = iustitiam.

But what about when the other party has a diametrically opposed notion of what justice is?? For strict Muslims, no non-Muslim, no kaffir, no harbi, may rule in a land that is rightly Muslim, in waqf land which is the everlasting, inalienable property of the Islamic ummah.
So justice for the strict Muslim, which is what Hamas’ leaders claim to be, means no Jewish state anywhere, nor can Jews have authority over Muslims. They and others like them, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, have said these things explicitly. But the Euro morons and ignorami don’t know or pretend not to know and their press won’t tell them.

The Euro self-righteousness is in full flower. This reminds me of Jean-Claude Milner’s book, Les Penchants criminels de l’Europe democratique. Milner argues that Euro culture must hate Jews. There was, he says, a respite starting in 1945 that passed. One thing that the Euros hold against Israel, Milner says, is that whereas Euros –les Belges surtout, peut-etre [selon moi]– now worship “peace,” Israel successfully defends itself.

In my view, it is one thing for a Euro political philosopher [van Parijs of Louvain, for example] to feel sorry for helpless Jews who have suffered but when the Jews are no longer helpless and have weapons and can defend themselves successfully, especially by a preemptive strike, then those Jews have become insufferable, especially if they harm the innocent, innocuous Jesus, the collective Jesus who is the “palestinians.” The paradigm of a passion play, which is how the Euros have been taught to view the Arab-Israel conflict, requires the “palestinians” to be forever innocent and innocuous, whereas the Jews are forever crucifying Jesus and beating Saint Stephen. And then one of the signers of the JCall petition for an “imperialist” imposed peace, recounts to us that she/he once lived in a “colonie” and was horrified by the behavior of the “colons.” So if she lived in a colony many years ago [n’importe quelle], she obviously knows what happens in Ma`aleh Adumim or Efrat [also “colonies” by definition of the French MSM].

She is ignorant of history. She doesn’t know that Jews were historically oppressed in Arab/Muslim lands, although she says she has studied how Jews were oppressed because of Christian lies. But Jews were oppressed under Islam too. Indeed, traditional Muslim society is built on oppression, humiliation, exploitation of tolerated non-Muslims, the dhimmis. Traditional Muslim society can be called an “occupation regime.” In fact, all Muslim lands outside of Arabia were conquered by Muslim armies before being Islamized. These lands never gave up the form of an occupation regime. And that situation is very clear, for instance, in Egypt today, given the treatment of the Copts.

Given the state of Euro ignorance about Middle Eastern realities and the traditional Euro prejudices and self-righteousness about Jews, Euro involvement in “peacemaking” can only be destructive to the cause of real peace. Obviously, an imposed solution cannot be peace or bring peace. But it can be psychologically satisfying for upper middle-brow Euro fools.

There are lots of “pearls” of the kind, and I did omit some insanities.
But I think they reflect much more the results of media intoxication than ignorance. These people are not conscious they’re biased, and think they know what the “reality” is, being fed at best by partial facts. And quite a few (like the “ex-colon”) superpose European history and events to the ME — a process greatly facilitated by terms such as “colonies” (for settlements), “occupation” (what the Nazis did), “oppression” (what the Empires did), etc.
Above all that, there’s the Human Rights discourse, endowing some with unprecedented (and unwritten) rights, while withdrawing them for others.

Whatever French I learned has been lost in translation over the past 40 years.

I was surprised to read about Alain Finkielkraut and my first thought was that here is Foxman’s French equivalent more worried about being politically correct than right. At times like these I suppose one has to be right to be correct. :-)

A group of intellectuals and personalities ostentatiously claiming their Jewishness as a pledge of objectivity has taken the initiative of a selective “Appeal to Reason” to which it intends to ensure the widest possible dissemination. In reality, the call goes against its stated aims: democracy, morality, solidarity of the Diaspora, the concern of Israel’s destiny. The underlying political offensive is clear to everyone.

1) The idea of an imposed peace with Israel under pressure, even the intervention of powers, is a denial of democracy and international law, reeking neo-colonialism. It violates the free choice of citizens of the Israeli democracy and sets a dangerous precedent for all other democracies.

2) It is based on a U.S. President who fails to face the deadly challenge Iran and a European Union which has generally identified with the Palestinian cause. Israel is under threat of extermination uttered by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its satellites that surround the north, Hezbollah, in south Gaza.

3) While these signatories make Israel alone bear the responsibility of the deadlock, all objective investigations show and demonstrate that neither the Authority nor the Palestinian society are genuinely interested in a just peace: 66.7% these people reject the creation of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, 77.4% rejected the idea of Jerusalem as the capital of two states (April 2010 poll by the Al Najah University in Nablus). Creating a Palestinian state without confirmation of the desire for peace in the Arab world without exception exposes the limited territory of Israel to a fatal strategic weakness.

4) The “Appeal to Reason” is suffering from amnesia: the Oslo accords led to an unprecedented wave of terrorism, the withdrawal from Lebanon in the installation of Hezbollah – and the guarantees of the Security Council are but a piece of paper – the disengagement from Gaza has led to the coup by Hamas and a rain of missiles for several years. Will “East Jerusalem” and the State of Palestine be under the thumb of the latter tomorrow? The regrets of the signatories of the appeal will not help …

5) Morality and honor, commitment to peace, are the not a prerogative of any camp. They are a challenge at all times. Through its partisan motives and biases, this “appeal to reason” contributes to attempts to boycott and delegitimize the State of Israel, and it is causing serious harm to its people.

6) Given the real threats facing Israel in its existence and which undermine the chances for lasting peace in the Middle East we wish to constitute an opinion movement that would mediate between the European Union of which we are citizens, that intends to defend and illustrate the legitimacy of the State of Israel as part of a real peace, and fight against anti-Semitism that has been developing dangerously.

I certainly do not have the bunch of insults for Shalom Achshav that some people on the israeli right have. I believe that, by now, they should have learnt about cognitive egocentrism, ….

They have been relatively quiet, publicly, for some time but going by the thinking of some individuals I know who support them, no, they have not learned anything.
Their constant clutching at straws over the past 20 years has taught them nothing about the characteristics of straws.

I don’t know why Azure have not translated Assaf Sagiv’s
“Melancholy of the radical left” into English.

He follows the inner logic of radical thought and examines the implications and practical conclusions derived from it, focusing on issues – positions of the anti-Zionist left – in relation to the 1967 “occupation” and the 1948 “Nakba”, their criticism of the oppressive character of the Jewish state and the strategies they use – that all show a fascinating yet alarming world view, encouraging pessimism rather than hope and detachment rather than involvement.
Despite its gloom, this view works like magic on guilt-ridden highly educated Israelis, who find in it a tempting mix of fiercely intellectual and moral purism; but it also explains the despair that drags these Israelis – most of them “good citizens” – and their inability to offer a real hope facing the reality that horrifies them.

EG, for a machine or automatic translation, that google trans of the Keeping Reason statement is pretty good, compared to some that I’ve seen. It really sounds pretty much like English.

I would add to the points that the composers of the statement listed, the point that the EU and the USA keep the conflict going by magnanimouly funding the palestinian authority. The EU alone gives about 480 B euros per year, if I am not mistaken. The US too gives a lot. Of course, they would say that it is all for the sake of peace. But we contest that claim. Obama, Mrs Clinton, George Mitchell and the rest of the Washington gang demand drastic concessions from Israel even before negotiations [showing how demokratichesky they are]. They pretend that the “palestinians” [a Western-invented people anyway] won’t come even to “proximity” talks –let alone direct negotiations– unless Israel makes all sorts of concessions. This is a pretense since the US, EU, UK, Japan hold the trump card of funding over the dollar-thirsty palestinian authority. Would Mahmud Abbas really dare defy an American and EU threat to withhold his funds?? Israel really doesn’t need foreign monetary aid.

So if I am right, the EU, USA, UK, et al. keep the palestinian authority going and let it defy them because Israel is the real target of the “peace process.” That is, the “peace process” is not meant to bring peace but is an expression of hostility for Israel, that is, it is “peace of mind” for antisemites.

In this vein, we can see that some of the demands made by the Obama administration on Israel are a racist denial of Jewish human and civil rights, and the aspiration to impose anti-Jewish apartheid in Jerusalem & Judea-Samaria.

Another point not made in the Keeping Reason statement is that both the PA/Fatah & Hamas maintain constant agitprop inciting their population in Gaza and Judea-Samaria to hate Jews, to destroy Israel, to murder Jews, and to deny Jewish rights, that is, Jewish national, human and civil rights. They do this through their respective TV & radio broadcasts, newspapers, schools, mosque preaching, etc.

The Iranian regime has, through Interpol, which was just recently given, by Obama, the ability to operate in the U.S without being subjected to the legal constraints of the U.S. consitution which apply to all U.S. law enforcement agencies, closed the bank account of, and issued an arrest warrant for an Iranian resident of Los Angeles who operates a radio station which presents analyses of events in Iran and which reports on human rights abuses by the current clerical regime of Iran.

Yes, the fact that Obama has given Interpol unrestricted free-reign, above any constraints of the U.S. constitution, within the United States, and that the U.N. is allowing the Islamic-Supremacist fascist current regime Iran to use Interpol to arrest, in the United States and other countries outside of Iran, Iranian critics of the Islamic-Supremacist fascist current regime of Iran is very frightening.

E.G., Eliyahu,

I have not read through all of the comments on this thread and I have no read through all of your comments on this thread, however I have read through some of the comments on this thread and I have read through some of your comments on this thread.

My rhetorical question, to which I know the answer, is,

Why don’t Israeli representatives of Israel, and Jewish advocates of Israel, say in speeches to the world what you have been writing in this thread?

My advice is,

Israeli representatives of Israel, and Jewish advocates of Israel, need to say in speeches to the world what you have been writing in this thread.

“…and that the U.N. is allowing the Islamic-Supremacist fascist current regime Iran to use Interpol to arrest…”

…and that Interpol (and the governments of Belgium and Germany and the United States) are allowing the Islamic-Supremacist fascist current regime Iran to use Interpol to arrest…

I mistakenly, and unsuredly, knowing that I was unsure of what I presumed, presumed that Interpol was a part of the U.N. (or of the E.U.), and because I did not know for sure of what Interpol was a part and if Interpol was a part of any other organization, it was wrong of me to write that the U.N. had a part in, and had authority over, Interpol.

…and that Interpol (and – it seems, to me, from the little that I have been able to read of the article which obsy listed a obsy link to – the governments of Belgium and Germany (and – from what I have read in the article which I listed a link to – the United States))…

About Euro self-righteousness, misinformation and all
that. Let us not fail to observe that, of course, the
French are not antisemites (who could imagine such a
thing ?), but they do not like the Jews. A recent element of proof. The daily Le Figaro (which does not like Israel, but this is not the point here) reported two days ago that in Strasbourg, a man with a yarmulka
had been severely beaten by two men (no details given),
also that the French Minister of Interior had considered this antisemitic aggression as very serious.
Immediately, dozens of messages from readers asked whether it would have been the same had the victim worn
a Christian cross or a beret, and who could tell this
was an antisemitic aggression, and would the Minister
of Interior show any concern if it had been a non-Jew,
and why is it considered acceptable to wear a yarmulka
and not a burqa ? I agree that many messages, but far from all, come from rather illiterate people. I do not believe that all of this has to do with views about the
ME conflict.

People that write comments on blogs, articles or forums are not representative for a country’s population. Weirdos are overrepresented and their opinions influence others who have lost contact with real life over the www .

One should take into account one of the main motivations to post a talkback: refute or contradict the article.
Aside from that, there’s the pavlovian response induced by PoMo equivalence schemes (why are Jews over-protected?) and by frustrated Catholics who are subject to “youth” harassment too but don’t get (enough?) headlines.

Quite a few bloggers have commented on Benjamin Birnbaum’s “Minority Report” – an account of Robert Bernstein’s break from HRW – in the New Republic. There were some ironies. According to Birnbaum, Marc Garlasco was one of the HRW staffers who was …

It is a sign of the weakness of the PA and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, that it needs the cover of Arab regimes. Incidentally, an amazing thing happened when the PA last did this a few months ago. The Syrian government opposed giving approval and the New York Times simply edited this material out of the Syrian statement it quoted. It was a graphic example of how slanted the media is today

Read closely what Abbas says recently. He does not say he will negotiate for the PA, but for the PLO.

“Let us not talk about things before they happen. I represent the PLO and the PLO talks on behalf of all the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and abroad. They are the one entitled to sign treaties with everyone.”

Understanding and accepting that most people who are not Jewish will not understand what Jewish people’s and Israel’s situation is unless Jewish people simply, honestly, accurately, and clearly, tell them what Jewish people’s and Israel’s one’s situation is.

What I am saying to do is simple, but has been never done, and is something that almost all Jewish people are strongly averse to doing.

This disgraceful JCall group reminds me that I read that it was precisely peaceniks and peacemongers, called “appeasers” or “pacifistes” in those days, who helped bring the world the horrors of the Second World War. And among the peacemongers in France were precisely some of the leading novelists and playwrights, such as Jean Giraudoux and Jean Giono. Hitler was described as “poetry in action” or some such effusive purple prose praise, by Giono. Other intellectuals joined in the folly. The JCall intellectuals are no better. They are worse because they should have learned from history.

The peace movement phenomenon has stalked the twentieth century like a macabre specter, typically emerging to call for concessions to aggressors, tyrants, terrorists and mass murderers. The phenomenon was particularly catastrophic before and during the Second World War. Today’s peace movement manifestations in Israel had their counterpart predecessors in that era. Then too mothers’ anti-war groups were active, as was a group specifically called “The Peace Now Movement” (in the USA). The groups active in Britain, France, and the United States believed that it was possible and desirable to make peace with Hitler. Government officials, journalists, intellectuals (“right” and “left”), politicians (“right” and “left”), and peace movement leaders claimed that complying with Hitler’s territorial demands would bring peace, at least for their own countries (although the slogan “territory for peace” was not yet in vogue). Thinking along these lines and corresponding policies helped lead to the Munich Pact (1938) which called for giving Hitler strategically vital parts of Czechoslovakia inhabited mainly by ethnic Germans. Thus the self-determination slogan came into play too.

At the time and since, the Munich concession has been widely recognized as an essential step in Hitler’s preparations for making WWII a year later. Hence, the pre-war “peace movements” defeated their own ostensible goal. In France, many pre-war advocates of peace through concessions to Nazi Germany became officials of the pro-Nazi Vichy government and its supporting parties and militias. In America, groups favoring peace with Nazi Germany (including Communists from 1939 to 1941) were active before and after US entry into the war, when information about Nazi mass murders had already received some publicity in the US.http://www.acpr.org.il/nativ_e/078-nativ-toc.htm#Peace%20Movements%20-%20Then%20and%20Now

I recommend
Fifty Years of French Intellectual Bias against Israel here (there’s a German version for obsy).

The author, Simon Epstein, published a book titled “Un paradoxe français: antiracistes dans la Collaboration, antisémites dans la Résistance” showing how French anti-racists (and even philo-Semites) of the 1930’s chose to join and serve the Vichy regime, while notorious anti-Semites chose to join the Résistance. Apparently, what distinguished the first from the last was their pacifism, some believing in a Pax Germania, while the others were “nationalists”.

I think the pacifist orientation is an important one in today’s zeitgeist.

May 2, Paris
What follows is the kernel, the beginning, or the false start of an article that will be developed in the coming days. But I wanted it to exist right now in its imperfect state. The creation of a JStreet look alike in Europe might be a ho-hum ripple in a long saga, but it comes as a last straw at a time when the noose is tightening around our necks. This JCall, one more frivolous example of how much we love Israel but just give the Palestinians what they want, whatever they want, is going to be presented to the EU Parliament on May 3rd and meanwhile back at the UN, Ahmadinejad will present his plan for nuclear disarmament… of Israel. With the blessings of Barack Hussein Obama. The JCall Appeal, at a time like this, is so infuriating, that it immediately provoked a vigorous response here in France. A genuine intellectual debate is underway, and I take it upon myself to report it with the fullness it deserves. We are good at this kind of debate in France.
…………..
……………
Dialexis, the non-sectarian organization that launched “Be Reasonable,” rejects the pretentions of intellectuals and personalities who use a Jewish label as proof of objectivity. Their Appeal is the opposite neither democratic, moral, nor an expression of Diaspora solidarity with Israel.

[to be continued]

Postscript: Not only is the support of Alain Finkelkraut depressing, but is compounded by that of political philosopher Bernard Henri Levy, whose influence on Sarkozy is considerable.

Heh! I went and posted my link first before reading the overnight correspondence and seeing your link to New English Review..
Seems we both got the same article from different sources.
Anyway at least it is getting out.
I like her writing as she doesn’t butter the bread to make it more tasty.

The following is a very rare example of a Jewish person publicly verbally defending, with simple, honest, accurate, clear speech, the Jewish people from obscene perverse vicious false accusations. The example is not only very rare, but, in the example, the simple, honest, accurate, clear, speech by the Jewish person, Jewish Israeli journalist David Horovitz, who is defending the Jewish people, specifically, the country of the Jewish people, from obscene perverse vicious false accusations is also very brief and not comprehensive.

Note the CNN newsreader’s initial expressed contempt toward the Jewish Israeli journalist, David Horovitz, and the CNN newsreader’s surprise, and the newsreader’s resentment and malicious animosity felt toward, and verbally and non-verbally communicated toward, the unusually non-delusional, and unusually non-appeasingly honest, Jewish Israeli journalist, David Horovitz, after David Horovitz rightly refutes, with simple, honest, accurate, clear speech, the perverse, obscene lies that were vilifying the country of the Jewish people, Israel, that the CNN newsreader was, at that time propagating, in the velvet-gloved, underhanded, sophisticated normal way that the “journalists” of the Western media propagate lies that vilify the country of the Jewish people, Israel.

Caught off-gaurd that a Jewish person, Jewish Israeli journalist David Horovitz, tells the facts of the situation in a firm, calm, clear, non-appeasing, way, a way that is very rare for Jewish people who are verbally defending Jewish people against false accusations that are being made against Jewish people, the overtly hostile and initially, and continuingly, overtly contemptuous CNN newsreader stammers, and then concedes the facts that David Horovitz has told, and then the CNN newsreader, by making a obscurant dissembling remark, tries to obfuscate and dismiss the facts that David Horovitz has just told.

The way that David Horovitz acts in response to false accusations that are being made against the country of the Jewish people, Israel, is the way Israeli representatives of Israel, and all Jewish advocates of Israel need to begin to act.

What is needed is much more speech that is like that which is spoken, in this brief instance, by David Horovitz, and what is needed is speech that is much more comprehensive than that which is spoken, in this brief instance, by David Horovitz.

“David Horowitz puts CNN newsreader in his place”, David Horovitz, the editor of the Jerusalem Report, with simple, honest, accurate, clear speech, refutes lies that vilify Israel that are, at that time, being propagated by CNN; David Horovitz’s name is misspelled in the title of the YouTube video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7N1AL0FTF4

As, I think, from my reading only the title and the sentence summary and first paragraph of the article, the author (Yoram Ettinger) of the piece (Does Jerusalem get it? – Congress has power to produce change in Obama’s Mideast policy) linked to by E.G. says, obsequiousness and pessimistic fatalism is harmful and fatal.

My advice to Israeli leaders is,

Stand on your own two feet.

There are many people in the world, and there are many people in the United States, and there are several branches of the government of the United States and there are many people in the several branches of government.

The United States is not controlled by a king, despite, it appears, the desires of the the Obama administration, who constitute the members of current executive branch of the government of the United States.

If Finkielkraut signed on for JCall because Grossman convinced him then he obviously did not understand what he was involving himself with.
That he was not able to see what JCall is all about and understand the aim to divide and rule the French Jewish community does not say much of his ability to lead.

No need to apologise for my inability to understand your Molière’s language link. Of course I could blame my shame on British Colonial persuasion that only English was honourable. :-)

Thanks for that YouTube link. I’ve never seen that before and was quite unaware that Horovitz appeared on CNN. That was in 2002 or thereabouts going by what he said and nothing appeared in the media to give one an inkling of its existence.
Is there a link to the full interview?
Can’t find any links to any site that captured the complete broadcast.

Fink is no leader. But he’s a fine thinker and ardent defender of Israel and of French values. He’s very appreciated in Francophone milieux, recently mostly by the not anti-Zionist (which usually comes with the anti-American) persuasion.

He nevertheless has his blind spots, including that camaraderie spirit that places (too) much confidence in what one’s trusted friend asserts. Without checking — otherwise what’s trust all about?

So if Grossman (and Sternhell, and Barnavi, and…) says that unless we get rid of the territories we’ll lose our Jewish soul and state, and that Israeli Jews desperately need external help to help ourselves, what’s a good Jew to do?

The Jewish community is very heterogenous and doesn’t really exist as a unit. So the divisiveness is negligible. It’s more or less well represented by its organs (EJC, CRIF in France) and those who feel unrepresented are loosely linked to either Judaism or Israel anyway. The real danger of JCall is for Israel, if ever this minority gets what it wants — more EU pressure on Israel.

David Grossman is of course a novelist, as is Amos Oz who probably signed the “appeal to reason” too. They remind me of Jean Giono and Jean Giraudoux, probably at least their equal as artists, but with worse or more evil judgment.

Both Jeans supported “peace” with Hitler. Giono called Hitler “a poet in action.” Check this on the link in # 84. The political positions of Oz and Grossman have more to do with their own psycho complexes than with political and historical understanding.

EG, maybe oz and grossman didn’t sign it because it was meant for EU citizens. But I suppose that they would have if they could have. But then we have Finkielkraut’s testimony that he signed it at Grossman’s behest.

I find Epstein’s thesis interesting. It shows how pacifism –in this case, peace at any price– can make people stupid. You know that many socialists [social democrats], Communists [Stalinists], and Trotskyists joined Vichy. Wasn’t the commander of one of the milices or police forces a socialist or Communist? Was that Jacques Doriot? The role of the milices in Vichy France shows that the desire to avoid war with Germany and to uphold the French surrender agreement with Germany led to violent, brutal oppression of the French, to murderous persecution of Jews, etc.

One thing that gets me is that the Trotskyist faction [of Ernest Mandel] that refused armed resistance against the Nazis on the grounds that the German troops were workers too, precisely calling the German soldier “arbeiter und soldat” [worker and soldier] are now most likely supporting the Arab form of Resistance that means slaughtering Jewish civilians or, in Iraq, slaughtering fellow Arabs in the name of Resistance and Insurgency. The Hizbullah has quite cleverly taken on the sobriquet of Resistance for itself. I view the Hizbullah as more like the Milice. But the foolish, Judeophobic EuroLeft cannot perceive the distinctions and differences between the Resistance in France, Italy and Belgium and the Hizbullah’s form of resistance.

D’Alema, the Euro Commie who reconstructed himself as a “democrat” [his party is now called il Partito Democratico] came to Beirut after the 2006 war and declared that he was on the side of Lebanon and the Hizbullah and heroic resistance, blah blah blah, maybe failing to understand that Hizbullah was viewed as an enemy by most Lebanese who did not appreciate Hizbullah provoking a war with Israel.

So if Grossman (and Sternhell, and Barnavi, and…) says that unless we get rid of the territories we’ll lose our Jewish soul and state, and that Israeli Jews desperately need external help to help ourselves, what’s a good Jew to do?

What’s a good Jew to do? He looks at the situation on the ground and realises that if he does the bidding of the philosophers, which demands that he sacrifice his physical security to feel good, then he ignores the reality of life which demands that one accept the thorns along with the roses to survive and he will surely lose the State.

In the advance story, headlined, “Look Who’s Talking” (Yechezkeli and Techiyeh Barak), the reporters write that Goldstone forgot one thing: “to look very closely in the mirror and to do intensive soul-searching (heshbon nefesh) before he rushes to judge others”.

In the full story to come out on Friday, it will be reported that while a judge in the South African Court of Appeals, Goldstone sent tens of blacks to their death. They point out in the article that while this hasn’t stopped Goldstone from severely criticizing the death penalty and those countries that continue to permit it, he has himself never expressed any regret for his actions.

A pity they did not look at the South African Institute of Race Relations’ criticism of the manner in which his commission in 1994 twisted the evidence to find the Inkatha Party guilty of violence when it was most the ANC that instituted the pre-independence violence.
I’m sure I posted a link to an article Goldstone Damaged South Afroca as well that appeared in the South African Jewish Report.
It is a PDF doc and can be found here27-november-2009.pdf
and the article on page 10

It shows how pacifism –in this case, peace at any price– can make people stupid. You know that many socialists [social democrats], Communists [Stalinists], and Trotskyists joined Vichy.

Maybe “pacifism” is the wrong term to describe the ideology in this case. They were all Socialists at heart so maybe there was a driving force to join the enemy of my enemy?

Anyway most of those you cite bathe themselves in clichés as incense/balm to hide the stench of their hypocrisy. Integrity is the least of their worries.
Just like Names advising people to make the wrong decision while themselves keeping their distance.

I’m far from defending Finkie’s choice. Just trying to get his mindset. And why criticise him more than Israeli intelligentsia who are even closer than him to the ground?
Well, not to the ground (they fly high), but to the situation…

No, no. Pacifism.
Anything but war. Don’t forget WWI and its millions’ victims toll was close.
The price — compromise down to one’s convictions and beliefs, analysis and integrity — is never too high. In their eyes.

European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said this petition “represents a small minority opinion of European Jewry, while the great majority believes that it is now the time to place pressure on the Palestinian side to negotiate directly with Israel in a meaningful way, and to combat the existential threats in the Middle East.”

So if Grossman (and Sternhell, and Barnavi, and…) says that unless we get rid of the territories we’ll lose our Jewish soul and state, and that Israeli Jews desperately need external help to help ourselves, what’s a good Jew to do?

Same answer as General Sheridan “The only good Jew indian is a dead Jew . Surprised that you asked, I thought that you knew.

This guy from what he is saying is terribly naive or ignorant, the latter which I doubt. So he bought into Grossman’s narrative.
Nothing about expecting anything from the Palestinians, only negative projections on the govt.

By the way, I was brought up on Churchill words about shame and war. I was also brought up hating the pacifists of the period between WWI and WWII. I had also family quotations of some remoter family, which used to say “Plutôt Hitler que les bolchéviks”. The remote cousins who said that were represented as complete fools, of course.

This one is more difficult to criticize, now that we know what the bolsheviks did during the Great Terror, in ’36-’37. And what about people who got Hitler, and then the bolsheviks?

French proverb : Il n’est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre (none is as deaf as that who will not hear).

In times of trouble, we are just left with our inner compass and our character. So, we shall see…

But that’s the whole problem with those French WWII pacifists. Pacifism/total rejection of war uncalibrated their inner compass. From anti-racists, humanists, dreyfusards etc. they turned to collaboration with the Nazis.
Whereas previously racists, anti-Semites etc. who were nationalists, turned to Résistance.

I believe that Finkielkraut is deeply ignorant of the reality of the Palestinian leadership. Remember : he supported the Geneva “agreements”. He knows much more about France than about Israel. In France, it is quite clear for him that one should not give up in face of islamist fanaticism. I suspect he has not (yet) understood that Hamas and a good part of Fatah are exactly the same as the moslem fanatics in France. On top of it, they have more weapons.

I like very much David Grossman as an author, which does not validate his politics in my eyes. Finkielkraut has an almost religious respect for literature – or rather Literature. He probably still thinks that one who can write fascinating novels is also a good judge in matters political.

What can I say? My conjecture that he signed because of a personal loyalty (see # 46) seems to have been correct.

The new European group JCall raises a disturbing question: how could pro-Israel intellectuals like Alain Finkielkraut and Bernard-Henri Levy support a venture that is simultaneously anti-Israel and intellectually incoherent?
…………
Asked to explain this disparity, founder David Chemla told the Jerusalem Post, “As Jews tied to Israel, we speak to the Israelis. So this is a call to the Israelis.”

That is obvious nonsense: if JCall really wanted to address Israelis, it would petition the Knesset — not the virulently anti-Israel European Parliament, which just two months ago backed the Goldstone Report’s allegations of Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza. The U.S. Congress, by comparison, denounced the report as hopelessly biased.

And that contrast highlights the more serious intellectual incoherence in JCall’s position.

What on earth did Grossman say to remove all rationality and context to get F and L to be co-opted?

The mantra: unless we get rid of the territories and the poisonous settlements we’re doomed. No more democracy in an Apartheid state, Jewish minority status and disappearance in a one state solution. Therefore, our only salvation is a Palestinian state. And Bibi won’t deliver it.

of course I know what the problem was with those interwar period pacifists! I just wrote that I was taught as a small kid that they were traitors and fools. Their inner compass got decalibrated for several reasons:

– the stories about the “german atrocities” during WWI were proved to be false, and a production of the allied propaganda machine

– WWI had been a horrible mass slaughter, and people had trouble imagining something worse that this mindless massacre. They had not imagined that worse than slaughtering soldiers on the front is slaughtering civilians by bombing cities, selecting a part of the population to exterminate it or taking massive numbers of hostages. They simply could not believe that such things could or would happen.

The moral compass fails when theory is deemed superior to facts on the ground. You know, there is a fraction of the trotskyites who travelled in direction of negationism. Not only the Mandel tendency of the 4th international as reported in #102 by Eliyahu, but much worse, the Pablist tendency spawned a current which argued that since exterminating the Jews had no economical interest for the nazis, then the extermination did not take place.

The bookstore “La Vieille Taupe” in Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques, in the Latin Quarter of Paris, which has now disappeared was the focal point of the extreme-left negationists, and they joined up with the extreme right.

The same holds for the pacifists of the interwar period. Their theory was that WWI was worse than anything one can imagine. So, the main idea was to poose war and warmongersz. They could have gotten some information about what was happening in the Reich, but they did not believe it, probably. After all Dachau was no secret and opened on 1933/03/31, just after Hitler obtained full powers. Soem people got out of Dachau before WWII, and they told what was going on there – Bruno Bettelheim, for instance.

So, what can we do if people do not want to know? beat their heads until they agree to know? That won’t be very efficient, will it?

I’m a lot much less knowledgeable than you (or Eliyahu) on those things, but Epstein’s analysis and the pacifism factor strikes me as a good dimension for distinguishing attitudes (rather than Left-Right).

To which it should be added that a major claim of the JCallers is that they’re not represented by the Jewish representative bodies.
As usual, it’s a distortion. Some signatories are themselves representatives in these bodies, whereas one wonders why the other unrepresented are not elected (or trying to get elected).

as a very young woman in the late sixties and the early seventies, I was very much interested by the prose produced by the extreme-left. I did enter “La Vieille Taupe”, before it became the hot spot of negationism. I guess I even have somewhere several documents from that time. The most memorable one was a rather lengthy text by a guy who signed “Baruch Zorobabel”, who explained how bad was the maoist idea of leaving studies and “settling” as an ordinary factory worker in industry, so as to make the proletaries more revolutionary. He was working in the Renault factories.

If Israelis could be sure that a second Gaza would not occur and that the West would not remove the context from the situation and continue to pander to the Palestinians there would be a State in less time than it takes to ride the jeeps out of there.

So the argument made by the JCalls and Jstreets are just excuses for pushing their agendas.
Evelyn Gordon’s Contention post says it all.

The story of “Baruch Zorobabel” is at the bottom of the page, before notes. In short, Nicolas Boulte (his real name) was a catholi from the left, he was a leader of a catholic students association. he became maoist after 1968, worked at Renault, and when he saw that the maoist leaders had no real political strategy, only a strategy of tension, he found himself before a “revolutionary court” for a whole night, where he was insulted and threatened with bodily harm (“barraminer” means hitting with a “barre à mines”, i.e. a spud bar, or a crow bar in british english), until hw would write his autocritique. But he did not agree, and he published thie booklet that I eventually bought in “La Vieille Taupe”. He was then severly hit in a cellar by a maoist posse. He attempted suicide, was rescued, and succeeding in killing himself three years later.

One sadly hilarious moment at the presentation circus was some speakers insisting on Israelis fear and sense of insecurity mixing up their minds (Reason) and better judgement etc. You’d think they were describing Warsaw Ghetto Jews, save from the material conditions. And they were calling for our brethren to help us. As if we were helpless rats in some cage. A mental but also a physical cage.
Maybe they’re projecting.

But does this description reflect or explain the Israeli production? Yes, the one BDS calls to boycott…

Cynic, both “right-wingers” and “left-wingers” joined Vichy. Simone de Beauvoir pointed out in her book [La Force de l’Age; The Prime of Life in English] that there was a “right-wing” “peace movement” parallel to the “leftist” “peace-movements” in France in the 1930s. So it was not really a matter of socialism, albeit Nazism formally called itself: The German National Socialist Workers Party — Deutsche Nazional Sozialistische Arbeiter Partei]. The Nazis were not only socialist but a workers’ party. Again, there was a “rightist” “peace” movement parallel to the “leftist” “peace” movement.

The chap was not some sort of anarchist : he was a symbol of the evolution of christians on the left from religion to misguided politics. The mass of propalestinian fanatics, in France, come from that side. Once he realized he belonged to a group that had no perspectives, he came back to his senses, and it was too late.

“In other words, I have no common language, to say the least, with Hezbollah fascislamists; the likelihood to see an appeal to reason cross their wall of blatant hatred are limited, I know, close to zero; discuss with a supporter of continued Israeli settlements, or even a religious resolved not to yield Jerusalem, seems to me, however, within the realms of possibility and henceforth, absolutely necessary.”

all of our past attempts at peacemaking have failed. But I have a new idea. Let’s offer to divide Jerusalem. That will do it. The Arabs will make permanent peace if we only offer to divide Jerusalem. Why didn’t anybody think about that before, like during the 19 years from 1948 to 1967 when Jerusalem was in fact divided??
– – – – – – – – – –

Bernard-Henri Levi wrote Le Testament de Dieu [The Testament of God] which as I recall talked about how the Communists helped the Nazis take power in Germany. He ought to know better than the facts and reasons that he supplies to justify his asinine position. During the 1930s Hitler made a series of territorial demands which could have been seen as reasonable if Hitler were not the one making them. He wanted to remilitarize the demilitarized Rhineland, which was sovereign German territory after all. And the Oestreich Deutsche of Austria ought to be able to join their Germanic fellows in a united Deutsches Reich. Then Hitler wanted the French to stop occupying the Saarland. Likewise, and here was also the issue of foreign occupation and self-determination for the Saarland folk. Then he wanted the ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia –an essential part of the Czech defenses against invasion– to have self-determination and be able to join the Reich. Then there was Memel and there was Danzig and maybe some other strips of land. If only this, that and the other piece of land were given up to him, then there would be peace in Europe. Hitler said so himself. And you can take him at his word, unlike our lying politicians, for Hitler and the Nazis were all, all, honorable men. And conceding this would support the principle of self-determination of nations.

Then too the Commies, the Comintern, saw France as acting like an imperialist power toward poor Germany, thus forgetting the history of the Franco-Prussian War and WW 1. Like the Commies and Trots and Comrade Noam Chomsky today, who see Israel as an imperialist power toward the poor Panamanian Arabs who have no friends and no resources and no defenses and no money. Except for the UN majority and the OIC and the EU and HRW, and billions from rich Arab oil states and the EU and the USA. And so on and so on. The Germans in the 1930s were seen as victims of imperialism just as the Panamanian Arabs are today. [I say Panamanian because Panama was never a nation or independent country until it was invented by US State Dept intrigue about 108 years ago. They wanted to separate “Panama” from Colombia because Bogota wanted too much money from the US for the right to build the canal. Likewise, there was never a “palestinian people” or “nation” until invented by Brit psywar/cogwar experts, apparently after 1948.]. And could anything be more just than self-determination for the palestinian Arabs? Who cares if the whole notion of a “palestinian people” was a Brit psywar/cogwar invention to use against the Jews?

So the appeasers and the pacifists’ concern for Hitler’s “just” demands led to war. Bernard-Henri Levi ought to go back and study the history of the 1930s once more. Maybe he might learn something.

Speaking of creepyness, look at the current “The Nation” page. The Nation is the home base for Soviet anti-zionist nostalgia in the USA

Tony Judt is interviewed. He gives an interesting take on how his self-identified elite, ruling class needs to regroup and find some “conversation” with USA citizens by which these citizen’s will recognize the Judtians superiority and submit. Goes to the heart of Western Marxist elitism, an emotion not limited to the extreme Left.

There is a new counter-appel to the JCall text, originating from Italy, which I find considerably better-written and more to the point than the
text ”Pour Raison Garder”.

An Italian and an English versions are available.
I do not know how to find a direct access to it, but one can do so in two steps: first, connect to the
French site http://www.desinfos.com, next go to the
contribution entitled
L’Appel ” Avec Israël, pour la raison ”

Incidentally, in the same issue of http://www.desinfos.com, there is an article by Alan
Dershowitz (the original English version is surely easy to obtain) about Goldstone’s activities during
the Pretoria regime, 20 years ago, which is worth the detour, and worth the maximum publicity possible.

How about an M-Call?
There must be millions of Muslim in Europe who are longing to sign something like this:

Call for reason

We are citizens of European countries, Muslims, and involved in the political and social life of our respective countries. Palestine faces existential threats. Far from underestimating the threats from its external enemies, we know that the danger also lies in the tyranny of Palestine’s own representatives and their continuing pursuit of warmongering, historic revisionism and propagandistic manipulation in Gaza, the West Bank and in the Arab districts of East Jerusalem. These policies are morally and politically wrong, even though they do not feed any acceptable delegitimization processes that this Palestine for some incomprehensible reason has never faced abroad.

For these reasons we have decided to take action based on the following principles:

1. The future of Palestine depends upon urgently achieving peace with the Israeli people on the basis of the Two States Solution. As we all know, this is urgent. The established Palestinian regime is a disgrace to all Muslims and leads to civil unrest.

2. It is essential therefore that the European Union, along with the United States, put pressure on both parties and help them achieve a reasonable and rapid solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

3. While the final decision belongs to the sovereign people of Palestine,
our commitment to Palestine as Muslims outside the Land of Islam obliges us to work towards reaching a just solution. Systematic support of Fatah and Hamas policies is dangerous and does not serve the true interests of the state of Palestine.

4. Our objective is to create a European movement that will allow the voice of reason to be heard by all. This movement is non-partisan. Its aim is to ensure the survival of Palestine as an Islamic and democratic state. This depends on the viability and sovereignty of a Jewish Israeli State.

We ask all those who agree with the above principles to sign and encourage others to sign this call.

Would they mind if one changed the title a little to “Fawlty Forecasting”?

This finding is astonishing to those who are not familiar with the eight decades of evidence in the peer-reviewed research literature, and nearly all who learn of it believe that while the finding might apply to others, it does not apply to them.

There are real people suffering for this ― but alas not the intellectual Jews in Europe. Maybe (just maybe) the Israeli government is not only worried about itself, but also about the lives of the people that they govern. Even Obama’s “glorious” settlement freezing in a growing society will uproot families.
Expelling your citizens from their social and economic environments to please some American and European prigs is hardly the good thing to do.

Cynic, I think that John Ray has done a great job. He proves that the notion of a “right-left political spectrum” is ridiculous. On one point I disagree with John. He says that Marxism/leftism is class-based, whereas Nazism is nation-based. But as the quotes that John provides demonstrate, the Nazis worshipped the “worker,” provided that he was German, while Marx and Engels were in fact German nationalists. Stalin was a Russian nationalist, validating Lenin’s claim that if you scratch a Bolshevik, you find a Great Russian nationalist. Lenin was probably a Russian nationalist too, with strong sympathies for Germany where the Marxist ideology came from.

correction:
Lenin said: …scratch a Bolshevik and you’ll find a Great Russian chauvinist.

on hrw and amnesty:
These two outfits have done a great deal to make the whole notion of human rights ridiculous. It is quite transparent to intelligent people that hrw and ai use the HR slogans as political weapons, not out of sincere concern for HR in principle. Hence, they undermine and discredit real human rights in practice.

The various pro-PLO/PA bodies, like ISM, that chirp day and night in defense of “innocent civilians,” have also discredited that notion. When innocent Jewish civilians were being harassed, beaten, even murdered, in Paris and the banlieues in the years after the al-Durah affair in 2000 and up till now, those same champions of decent treatment for Arab “innocent civilians” had nothing to say in defense of innocent Jewish civilians. Like S Selam, Ilan Halimi, etc. As Orwell would have said, All innocent civilians are equally innocent but some are more equal than others.

“My Judaism is part of my identity. I feel linked to Israel’s existence rather than linked to the state of Israel.”

2 mai Hyams Roger Mr Writer London UK
I don’t consider Israel to be part of my identity. However, I do think there needs to be a clear line between an accident of birth and being assumed to support Israel’s foreign and domestic policy. And I believe that peace and understanding is more important than nations or even culture.

I haven’t proceeded to statistics so I may be wrong, but my impression is that there are lots of psychoanalysts/psychologists that signed. I haven’t noticed this disproportion (?) on the “keep the reason”. And my impression is that the proportion of Academics in both petitions is about the same. This can’t be said about the proportion of self-declared non-Jews: it’s significantly higher on JCall, and not only because there’s no field to add some statement on “Keep the Reason”. Most names are “characteristic” enough. And non-Jews (e.g., Pastor) make it very clear.
Funny how a Call for Jews draws so many non-Jews, while an unspecific Call draws so few.

In that link I provided there is a link to the “People’s Cube” where there is an interesting comment on the Kalmyk.
From that comment it seems that Lenin wasn’t a pure white Russian and so had to make up the shortfall.

1914. Paul la Demain
The J-callers are either bad to the bone, or else ignorant by design. They should be forced to eat the pages of Prof. Grief’s seminal treatise on International Law: The Legal Foundation and Borders or Israel under International law. This law is and remains enforceable today, and would have been except for the foolish nostrums of fantastically uninformed “in-tell-leck-shu-alls”.

Interesting incident. I went to the Tikun Olam website, read the article and read an article about Alan Dershowitz receiving an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv Univerisity. When I tried to go look at the comments, I received the following notice:

Sorry, but your IP address has been associated with spam in the past.

I have never even visited the site before. Maybe they are banning all access to comments from My ISP ?
Or maybe from all Israeli sites ?

And they complain about a gag order ?

This I suppose in response to the journalist writing:

Blogger Richard Silverstein in the website “Tikun Olam”, one of the first to write about the Anat Kam case, has already noted this new affair.

Does anybody “outside” know what all the “security” fuss is about?

Of course we all know about Silverstein and Tikun Olam.

By the way I see that Haaretz is trashing Itamar Marcus of PMW (Palestinian Media Watch) as a RWE (Right Wing Extremist)

The reporters that came witnessed a surreal event, in which the official Foreign Ministry briefing room was turned over to a politically right-wing nongovernmental organization. Though it was Ayalon’s office that invited the press, the briefing was conducted by a public relations agent for PMW rather than the Foreign Ministry.

PMW’s activities are entirely legitimate, and some of its findings could clearly be categorized as disturbing evidence of anti-Israel incitement. Yet many of the journalists in attendance, who included many representatives of foreign media outlets, were not aware that PMW is led by a right-wing activist, and that many other such activists, from Israel and abroad, are involved in it.

Ooh, these RWEs. Obviously if they are involved then nothing that the Foreign Ministry publishes is credible.

I’ll do my best to be patient, till the Wordbeast digests your links.
I haven’t seen anything more appalling than ususal on today’s al-Ard. If it’s Ottolenghi’s “old” Op-Ed you refer to — it’s read and approved.

It’s really impressive, “Keep the Reason” is at 7752 and signatures keep pouring, while JCall stagnates at 5267.

EG & Cynic, et al.
It seems that there were two more or less pro-Israel petitions, one from France, drawn up by Prof Shmuel Trigano and others, and one from Italy, drawn up by Fiamma Nirenstein. It seems that the Italian petition was reported in Israel, at least in Maqor Rishon. Both petitions basically agree but they are different. The sponsors of the two petitions have apparently decided to work together, as I have been informed.

About Kalmuks, many of the Kalmuk troops, I believe, went over to the Germans in one of many non-German Wehrmacht and SS divisions [General Vlassov et al]. So there seems to have been a Kalmuk division or unit of some size that went over to the Germans and could not go back to the USSR after the war for obvious reasons. There were Chechen and Ingush and Circassian Nazi collaborators too, by the way. Some took part in the Einsatzgruppen. Some of these Chechens/Circassians were brought to Jordan after WW2 where they were welcomed by the Arabs. The Chechens/Circassians were Muslims of course.

The Kalmuks were not Muslim. I was informed that they were Buddhist. Anyhow, a large number of them were brought to the USA as part of a DP relocation program after the war. I’m not sure of what year. Some were sent to Philadelphia where they were placed in the hands of the Philadelphia Quakers, as I understand. Philadelphia is supposed to be the headquarters of the Quakers in the world, or at least in the US.

In short, the special badge that the Soviets devised for the Kalmuks did not retain their loyalty and many would up on the German side.

Oy, what a mess!
I thought the Circassians were not anti-Zionists, at least those who stayed in Israel (were there any refugees amongst them?). Do you know when the Ottomans transferred them? And the Bosniacs, while we’re at it?

How can Buddhists be in Einsatzgruppen?!?

Of course Nirenstein and Trigano cooperate: he signed hers!
However, the Nirenstein petition is mostly signed by Italians. Trigano et alii’s one is mostly signed by Franco-Belgo- Israeli Jews.

Veronique Chemla put up the following book review on her blog in light of the war of the two petitions, the anti-Israel, “call to reason” and the pro-Israel, Staying with Reason.
The review is about a book recounting how various people and organizations in France defended Israel, according to their lights.

Thousands of Circassians left their original homeland in the northern Caucasus upon the Russian conquest, I think in the first half of the 19th century. The Ottoman state gave them refuge in various parts of their empire, putting some in Syria, in Israel, and in Jordan of today. I think that some stayed behind. Anyhow, Circassian units were used by the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide for the purpose of murdering Armenians. Eitan Belkind, a member of Aaron Aaronsohn’s NILI group, gave an account of the massacres in his memoirs [published by the Ministry of Defense publishing house, ca. 1978]. Some of the Circassians in Jordan have attained high positions. The Circassians in Israel are considered loyal.

I was hoping someone could tell me what the Security Scandal is about that Ynet did not disclose.
On first reading the headline I imagined SECurity and envisioned something to do with Wall Street. See what the media are doing to me?

al-Aard is out to subtly destroy the credibility of PMW by painting it with RWE colours.

By the way if I may, I want to slip in a fact about Apartheid South Africa to link in the thinking of Hyams Roger Mr Writer of your #156:
Way back when each colour was politically distinguishable in ASA, Japan started buying up massive quantities of iron ore and for this transaction SA had to build a port big enough for the tanker size ships and a rail link of several hundred kms from the mine to the port. (Sishen – Saldanha)
This obviously required a lot of political and civil interaction, so to maintain a modicum of rationale in the separation state the Japanese were declared Honorary Whites and permitted to interact etc., with whites at all levels of society, especially as huge amounts of moolah were involved.

Maybe the Writer mentioned above imagines that he has already been admitted as an “Honorary non-Jew” especially as it was purely by accident that he came to be?

At least the Obama administration, according to the article, correctly called the allegations outrageous.

Israeli leaders need to speak the truth about what is euphamistically called the “Arab-Israeli conflict”, and, even more perversely, called the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” to the members of the Obama adminstration, and to the world.

Israeli leaders need to tell the true narrative about the racist war against the country of the Jewish people.

The members’ of the administration belief in the false narrative (even against the few facts which they know which would, in circumstances in which the world was not mired in ignorance and bigotry toward Jewish people, make impossible the belief in the false narrative), is what the root problem is.

but the Obama administration too has a racist, apartheid policy. What else can you call the demand that Jews not be allowed to live in Judea-Samaria, and even in parts of Jerusalem, although Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem for more than 150 years??

Their bigotry toward Jewish people is, in this world, par for the course.

Dispelling the bigotry is possible.

It is difficult, but it is possible.

To dispel the bigotry, Jewish people need to tell the truth.

(That is, Jewish people who are are aware of the situation that Jewish people are in – Jewish people who are not delusional and not deranged and who have not completely succumbed to believing the lies themselves as a psychological coping mechanism.)

Jewish people need to tell the truth by speaking simply, honestly, accurately, and clearly.

The following is an excellent article. (The article is described, in text, an editor’s note, preceding the article on the page of the article, as being part one of what is going to be a four-part series of articles.)

I understand that when you used the term Jap you may have been frustrated, and that you didn’t mean to be hurtful, but, in the United States, the term Jap is considered very offensive, and is a racist epithet, and is experienced, by ethnically Japanese people, as being very hurtful.

I don’t mean to offend you nor to be nitpicking, but I think that it is very important for those of us who are Jewish, and who are horrified and vexed by the injustice against Jewish people, to be mindful of our words, so that we don’t cause any harm to ourselves and others.

The comments on the post are, as is usual on the blog web site Jihad Watch, in support of Israel. Jewish readers here may find the comments on the post, especially one of the comments which is by someone who is Indian, uplifting and encouraging.

I think that many of the commenters on Jihad watch don’t know the whole situation that Jewish people are in, and don’t know the situation that Jewish people have been in throughout history, and don’t know the whole situation that the country of the Jewish people is in, and don’t know the whole free, open, nature of Israeli society, and don’t know about the Stockholm Syndrome that almost all Jewish people experience to varying degrees, but they know enough about the Islamic-Supremacist political movement, and about the corrupt state of the contemporary Western mainstream media, and about the situation that Israel is in, that they support Israel.

One of the commenters on the post, Hugh (Hugh Fitzgerald), who sometimes posts posts on Jihad Watch, knows the whole factual history and current reality of the situation (the situation that Israel is in – the racist religious war against Israel), and he has written many excellent comments (and, maybe, I think, articles) on Jihad Watch about the factual history and current reality of the situation (the situation that Israel is in – the racist religious war against Israel).

I think that it is important to point out and understand that the immoral traitorous views expressed and treacherous actions done by certain Muslim Arab (and I think certain Druze Arab) members of the Israeli parliament do not reflect the views currently held by the majority of the Muslim Arab (and Druze Arab) people who are Israeli citizens.

I think that many Arab Israeli people (of whom most are, I think, Muslim – truly traditionally-moderately-Muslim and culturally-Muslim, not Wahabi Islamic-Supremacist – and Druze) feel not fully welcomed as full members of Israeli society.

I think that many Arab Israeli people very much would like to feel fully welcomed as full members of Israeli society.

All citizens of Israel have equal rights and protection under the law, and given the situation the Jewish people of the country of the Jewish country, Israel, have been in since before Israel was refounded in 1948, how the Jewish people in Israel, and the government of Israel, have treated and related to Arab Israeli people is very beneficial, and is, I think, unparalledly and unsurpassedly beneficial compared with any other society that has ever been in a situation that has been in even remotely as similar to the situation that the Jewish people of Israel have been in.

However, I think that Jewish people in Israel need to engage in a concerted effort to communicate honestly, accurately, and clearly, to Arab Israeli people the factual history of the situation that the country of the Jewish people, Israel, is, and has been in, and the factual history of the experience of the Jewish people throughout history, and how they, Jewish Israeli people feel.

I think that Jewish Israeli people need to join with, and come together with, Arab Israeli people, and work together with Arab Israeli people to comunicate the situation that Israel is in to the world.

There are Arab people in the Middle East, outside of Israel, who appreciate and support Israel.

Jewish Israeli people, including Jewish Israeli leaders, need to start communicating, via telecomunications, and in personal meetings, their own situation and how they feel, openly, honestly, accurately, and clearly, to the Arab people in the Middle East.

…I think that many Arab Israeli people (of whom most are, I think, Muslim – not Wahabi Islamic-Supremacist, truly traditionally-moderately-Muslim and culturally-Muslim, and Druze) feel not fully welcomed as full members of Israeli society)…

…I think that Jewish Israeli people need to join with, and come together with, Arab Israeli people, and need to work together with Arab Israeli people to communicate the situation that Israel is in to the world…

So the people at Haaretz believe that Israel would long have become a fascist state if it were not for Haaretz’ heroic efforts to lead those naturally evil Jews away from the dark paths and into the light of …
well, socialist dictatorship on opinions and in the end a fascist Islamic caliphate.

Nuance. Ha-Ha-Haaretz leads the battle of denunciation of the fascist turn the Israeli society and its institutions are taking right before our eyes. If it were not for them, we’d never have noticed it, for we’re blind and their view is full and penetrating.
Guardians of Reason they are, and if challenged (not that anyone would dare suggest that they’re somewhat challenged), they may well turn into Guardians of the Revolution.

The Japanese discriminate more or less actively against practically anyone who is not Japanese. It’s a cultural thing.

So then, like Muslim cultural practices, quite OK with the progressives.
No wonder Melanie Phillips’ new book is about an upside down world.
They still haven’t apologized for their behaviour in China and other parts of S.E. Asia during the Second World War; so no wonder they get so much respect in the world.

Here are some pix of the neighborhood where the FE Stiftung is located in Jerusalem. It is near the EU compound, several Israel govt ministries, the eye hospital of the Knights of Malta [= Knights Hospitallers], the Shepherd Hotel plot, once owned by the Nazi collaborationist mufti of Jerusalem [UK-appointed], Haj Amin el-Husseini, and the Tomb of Simon the Just. This tomb was a focus of Jewish pilgrimage before access to it was cut off at the end of December 1947 and Jews living in the adjacent homes were driven out by Arab irregular troops.

EG & Obsy, by the way, Israel Media Resource reported a few years ago that PASSIA was funded by the US AID. Unfortunately, the link is now gone. However, there is no reason why both AID and the Ebert Stiftung can’t jointly fund PASSIA. I read a few years ago that PASSIA conducted courses for Arabs in how to speak to the Western media. One of the guest lecturers was Lyse Doucet [spelling?] of BBC.

I should add that living in the neighborhood before WW2 was the Arab nationalist historian, George Antonius, who rented a home from the Mufti Husseini. The rented home was called Karm al-Mufti, the Mufti’s Vineyard. How quaint and picturesque!!

Also in that area is the location of a massacre in which Arab forces slaughtered 78 Jewish doctors and nurses on their way to the hospital on Mount Scopus [April 1948]. British forces nearby refused to come to the aid of the trapped Jewish medical staff. The Haganah had earlier taken the area back from Arab forces, but the British army attacked them and forced the Haganah to retreat, thus making the subsequent massacre possible in that place.

Thank you for the link to the article. The article is excellent. What is needed is much more of the same type of simple, honest, accurate, clear communincation and what is needed is simple, honest, accurate, clear communication which is even more comprehensive and more clear.

“…The new enemy rising to challenge America is not an unresolved dispute between Israelis and Palestinians but Islamic fundamentalism that rejects all western concepts of modernization and equal rights for women and citizens. Its tentacles run out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, ironically all three categorized as friends of the USA…”

“…Speaking as an Arab-American, I welcome the protection that Israel’s existence as a minority Jewish state in the Muslim Middle East projects for other minorities including some 25 million Christian Arabs under extreme pressure, 30 million Kurds and other tribal or religious populations who must live free of persecution. Israel stands as a symbol that it is possible to have a multi-cultural tolerant Middle East…”

The factual history of the racist Islamic-Supremacist and Arab-Supremacist war against the country of the Jewish people needs to be communicated repeatedly and effectively with simple, honest, accurate, clear speech.

Jewish Israeli people, including Jewish Israeli leaders, need to communicate with the Arab people in the Middle East, including Arab government officials and Arab leaders, and need to do so standing up for themselves, communicating the factual history of the situation, and communicating their feelings, and engaging with the Arab people in the Middle-East as fellow members of the community of the Middle-East.

Although I wrote that the article that E.G. link to in his reply to me was excellent, there is an aspect of the article which I think is not beneficial.

I do not think that any violence is beneficial, I think that all violence is harmful, and I do not think that expelling any people from anywhere is beneficial, I think that expelling any people from anywhere is harmful, and I think that the article saying that Israel should have expelled Arabs from Judea when Israel took back Judea when Israel defeated the attacking Arab armies in 1967 is harmful.

I think that what is beneficial, and what is needed, is simple, honest, accurate, clear speech about the history of, and the current reality of, the situation – the racist war against the country of the Jewish people, Israel.

I think that the general direction that the article goes in, and the direction, in general, that article is advising for Jewish Israeli people to go in, is the direction, in general, that Jewish Israeli people need to go in.

…I think that what is beneficial, and what is needed, is simple, honest, accurate, clear speech about the history of, and the current reality of, the situation – the Islamic-Supremacist, Arab-Supremacist, racist religious war against the country of the Jewish people, Israel.

EG, I skimmed over the first section of Manuel Hassassian’s ebook on Arab factionalism in the Land of Israel. Among the mistakes/lies, two stood out.

1) his use of the term “palestine” anachronistically. There was no “palestine” on the ground under the Mamluk or Ottoman empires. The last time before 1920 when the country –the Land of Israel or part of it– was a separate state was under the Crusaders driven out definitively in 1291. Dahar al-`Umar did set up a semi-independent state within the weak Ottoman Empire in the 18th century in the north of Israel and southern Lebanon. Likewise, Ahmad al-Jazzar, the Butcher. But these were local and ephemeral statelets, not nations.

2) his claim that the Arabs of “palestine” [not a defined territory under the Ottoman Empire within any boundaries] were “oppressed” by the Ottoman Empire is false. The Arab upper crust in the country [and elsewhere] was integrated into the Ottoman ruling class. Consider families like the Husseinis, Khalidis, Abdul-Hadis, etc. Indeed, Obama’s pal, Rashid Khalidi, who may know a little of his own family’s background, wrote in a book [that is, not in one of his propaganda appearances] that the Arab-Muslim upper class saw itself as part of the Ottoman Empire, identified with it, and did not wish to separate from it. The Arab historian Zeine N Zeine and the Turkish sociologist Ziya Gok Alp said much the same. The Arab upper crust did not then consider itself “oppressed” by the Ottoman state which was a Sunni Muslim state. Musa Kazim el-Husseini was appointed Ottoman governor of a district in Anatolia [I would like to know where and exactly which district, which term probably refers to a sanjaq]. Musa Kazim was Faisal Husseini’s grandfather, by the way. Other “palestinian” Arabs also received high posts. They were quite satisfied with being part of the Ottoman Empire. What troubled them was the 1908 Young Turk coup d’etat [according to Elie Kedourie], which seemed to deemphasize the Muslim nature of the state. The link between Musa Kazim and Faisal Husseini and the presence of an Abdul-Hadi as the head of PASSIA show the continuity of the dominance of old notable families. The Western powers no doubt find them the most suitable Arabs to work with.

Hassassian’s lies seem typical of the PASSIA, Bir Zeit and Ramallah school of falsification of history. PASSIA is run by one of the Abdul-Hadi family, as far as I know, or at least was up to recently.

EG,
Yits’haq La’or is in a state of denial over the Vichyite nature of the Israeli “peace camp” and most of the “Left.” Some of his own “poetry” might not stand up to scrutiny on the issue of fanatic Judeophobia.

More importantly, the “peace camp” and most of the “Left” are in denial over the historic oppression, economic exploitation, and systematic, legalized humiliation of Jews in Arab/Muslim-ruled lands. They refuse to recognize the dhimma status of Jews under Islam, and the repeated Muslim massacres/pogroms against non-Muslims [dhimmis] including Jews. This is by the way an insult to Jews coming from Arab/Muslim lands who much resented their treatment in those places.

The “Left-peace camp” also refuse to recognize the Nazi-like nature of much or most of the Arab nationalist movement and parties such as the Baath, consciously modeled on German Nazism and Italian fascim. Likewise the Nazi nature of Hamas [see Article 7 of Hamas charter]. Nor do they ask why or even acknowledge that the Western imperial powers today mainly support the Arab side against Israel.

The collaboration in the Holocaust of Arab nationalist leaders, especially Haj Amin el-Husseini [appointed mufti of Jerusalem by the UK govt in the country], is likewise denied. Literally denied by many “left-peace camp” professors. History does not fit the narrative that makes them feel good and self-righteous. I think that Vichyite is a fair description of Yits’haq La’or and his ilk. In regard to La’or himself, we might find some parallels with the repulsive Celine.

Eliyahu: “The “Left-peace camp” also refuse to recognize the Nazi-like nature of much or most of the Arab nationalist movement”

The was exactly what came into my mind, when I read Lo’or’s article. He complains that Israelis are blind to the oppression of “Palestinians”. And I thought ― that might be true, maybe they don’t care much about how much Hamas is oppressing the “Palestinians” people. But he ignores that road completely and fantasies about Israeli violence against “Palestinians”.(*)
Either Lo’or has a big blind spot himself or he does not care about “Palestinians” but only about Jews that behave badly (in his view).

*: Of course there are Jews who use violence against “Palestinians” and if you catch everyone of them on camera you can distort reality quite a bit. The Muslims would not even need to provoke these violence. People are violent in any country against anyone. Utilizing one kind of people with cameras and offering them the help of an organization that spreads their recordings is a classical example of attention bias.
Anyways, this is far from the level of violence and real oppression that Hamas or even Fatah utilize.

“If the facts do not agree with the theory – so much the worse for the facts.”

I find the phrase, often attributed to Hegel, does describe both Laor and Assassian’s enterprises.

Regarding Laor and his likes, I don’t have much to add to my #199 comment and to yours above. Only that today’s accusation of fascism was termed “Rhinoceritism” a decade or two ago. The radical left is the same now as then, with the exception of its members coopting themselves in more visible/audible positions.

I too have run through much of Assassian’s “Palestine”. One thing he can’t be accused of is objectivity. Another, is rendering a full account of events. But neither is what I looked for.

His narrative includes 2 interesting lines. First, the fragmented nature of the Arab society in Syria-Palaestina which, according to him, results from their tribal, clannish nature (providing ground to Salzman’s thesis), and their subsequent incapacity to form a distinctive body (i.e., nation, people) in which internal differences play a minor role relative to the common denominator(s) that endow it with some uniqueness.
Second, there’s the quasi lack of attribution of responsibility to the different Arab players. At most, there are suspicions and accusations of some fractions more or less collaborating with the Zionists, the British, or both, which the latter are assumed to have instigated.

And then, there’s an (incomplete) account of how Amin al-Husseini got rid of opposition. IMHO, this is the real tragedy of Mandate Palestine’s Arabs.

Oh, and there’s one question Assassian does quite clearly answer (so far as I read): Why was the Zionist project and its implementation viewed as a threat by the local Arabs?
According to him, on one hand, they loathed the prospect of being governed by the Jews, and on the other hand, the very idea of being governed (in the modern, Western sense of the concept) did not fit their “way of life”.

The pi*s camp don’t really care about the “Other”. Their view is inside-oriented (as opposed to outside), towards their self in the first and foremost place, and towards the collective soul they wish or pretend to represent. This is why they complain about what “we” are doing or what “is done in my name”, and do their best to distance themselves from the condemnable deeds. They dissociate themselves from any kind of majority, especially on moral grounds – by pretending to have higher moral standards.
This is not a very courageous attitude in a democracy, just an elitist or seclusive one.
Apparently, whatever the “Other” does has no relevance; it’s how I/we deal with the “Other” that deserves full and undivided attention.

EG, but these people don’t really identify with the “we” or “us” that they talk about. They often seem to identify more with the poor, pathetic, put upon Other. So they have no right to talk about “we/us” or in our name.

As to rhinoceritis which you refer to. As we know, the term comes from Eugene Ionesco’s play, the Rhinoceros. I read it years ago and I think it has a lot of insights relevant to the “peace camp.” I think the term rhinoceros or qarnaf in Hebrew fits richard richard goldstone rather well. He’s a rhino in Ionesco’s sense. It is the height of the “peace camp’s” solipsistic self-absorption and insensitivity that they don’t see that the term fits them and the historicopolitical role that they are playing much better than it fits the national camp or the “settlers”, for example. One “lefty” with an overheated brain told me back in the 1980s that Gush Emunim [the original settlement movement] was a parallel to the Freikorps in post-WW I Germany.

I apologize because I think that my last previous several comments in which I talked about the article that E.G. linked to may have been unbeneficial and harmful.

I think that I may have unintentionally “shut down” the article, which, if I did so, was wrong for me to do, and which I did not mean to do so, and which I am sorry if I did so. I apologize.

I think that the article was very good.

I wrote my comments, those comments, when I was sleep deprived, and when, resultantly my mind was weak, and when, also resultantly, my mind incoherent, and when, also resultantly, my OCD was strong. My mind is also very wak right now so I will try to write only something very brief and I hope that this message is not unbeneficial and that it is beneficial.

I think that I should have just said that the article was very good.

I, because I am too tired and weak, cannot go into the details about what I am thinking, but, I will say the following.

The expulsion of, and transfers of, peoples is the way that many of the many countries that were created in the last 70 years were created, and the expulsion of, and transfers of peoples as a way to create other countries in the world has been explicitely advocated by racist anti-Jewish bigoted hypocrites such as John Mearshiemer who explicitly falsely accuse, and condemn, the Jewish people of Israel of having done that to Arab people.

However, that issue is not the point now.

I think that what is important now for Jewish people to do is to do what the author of the article advises to do.

Jewish people who know the factual history of the situation need to tell the Jewish Israeli people the factual history of the situation, and Jewish advocates of Israel need to tell the Jewish people in the United States the factual history of the situation, and Jewish Israeli people and Jewish people outside of Israel need to gain confidence in themselves.

Jewish people need to know their historical and legal rights and regain the confidence in themselves and need to know that they are human beings just like all other people, and that they have the human rights that all other people have.

Of course they don’t identify with anyone. That’s what I tried to explain in #230.

The idiot who compared Gush-Emunim to the Freikorps is characteristic. Talking in slogans, making fallacious analogies and comparisons… As much as Israeli discourse is loaded and often uses exaggeration much as others use understatement, this ignorance-based hate speech is shocking (which is its primary objective) and repulsive.

IMO these people identify with their surrounding culture, but they don’t want to. So they try to distance themselves.

I also think, that it’s a method to cope with double moral standard of the culture that they were “born” into: they build an theoretical culture by cleaning it of those double standards that disturbs them most.
Then they have to convince others that it’s the others of their culture that are misbehaving.

I guess moral double standards most often are the product of a beautiful theory meeting reality. Trying to enforce theory on a reality that does not fit can turn out pretty bad.

From 1997-2004, USAID has given (or is scheduled to give) the PASSIA lobby a total of $1.7 million. According to the report sent by USAID, which appears at: http://www.usaid.gov/wbg/partners.htm, USAID funds are used in the following way:

“PASSIA conducts two activities under this agreement. In a series of training seminars, PASSIA provides skills and capacity to young Palestinian professionals in areas such as fund-raising, strategic planning, advocacy, and training of trainers.” Such “trainers” may even be exported to the U.S. to teach pro-Palestinian “activists” at the Third National Palestine Solidarity Conference “Hate Fest” at Ohio State in early November – all on the American taxpayer’s dime.

On February 7, 2002, a staffer of the U.S. House International Relations Committee had provided our news agency with a list of Palestinian Arab agencies that were supported by USAID. That list included PASSIA, then the leading PLO media and lobbying training center.

The U.S. State Department and USAID had chosen to respond to these disclosures by declining any formal comment about U.S. funding of PASSIA, even though every one of its study program booklets printed since 1998 reads “kindly supported by USAID” just above the copyright.

However, last August a USAID spokesman acknowledged that it had been funding PASSIA since 1997, albeit with the proviso that no funds would be used to lobby the U.S. Congress. In that statement, USAID also mentioned that the U.S. government also applied rigorous standards of financial accountability to the funds that it remitted to PASSIA.

However, the PASSIA spokespeople tell a different story about how they use USAID funds:

David Nassar, former field director of the Arab-American Institute of Washington, D.C. (AAI), now directs the PASSIA “Civil Society Empowerment” project. He also authored and collated the corresponding booklets. Nassar says that the USAID-PASSIA program was designed specifically “to meet the specific needs of Palestinian society.”
………

Thus does PASSIA undertake a Madison Avenue approach to terrorism with U.S. tax dollars. This U.S. taxpayer-funded “how-to” manual was written in 1998.

When it comes to media manipulation, PASSIA’S job was made easy for them. As the booklet continues into chapter 6, a “discussion” is recounted. The participants are moderators Dr. Khatib and Rami Khouri of Jordanian television, Tudor Lomas and two Western journalists: Eric Weiner, of National Public Radio (NPR) – another U.S. taxpayer funded enterprise – and Lyse Doucete of the BBC.

Just remembered this on reading RL’s latest post on the Media honour – shame game.

Those radicals who consider themselves Left do have a cleansing obsession that has to do with clearing their soul. Albeit being anti-religious they’re also obsessed by notions such as sin, moral stain etc.
(And they’d never use Ariel to wash that ;-) )

It is long over due. A sane voice against the “human rights” organizations’ conspiracy-collected war on Israelis’ Human Rights. It doesn’t matter if its (like the UN) influenced by Arab oil / Lobby, Islamic lobby, Arab “street anger,” or impacted by the powerful mythology of “strong Israel vs. poor weak Arab” – (deriving from a skewed image, naively based on looking at a raw-but-shallow picture of balance-of-armament VS reality, underestimating the Goliath power of “Palestinians” and Hezbollah use of their civilians against cautious and Humane Israel) is the source of it.